Thomas Merton

Just discovered a new author: Thomas Merton. Well, he's new to me. He actually died in 1968. He was a Trappist monk. Thus far, I find his spirituality refreshing and quite compelling. I can't say that I agree with everything I've read but overall he is a profound writer and thinker.

Yesterday the following quote from Merton really resonated with me:

"The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent... Our discovery of God is, in a way, God's discovery of us. We cannot go to heaven to find Him because we have no way of knowing where heaven is or what it is. He comes down from heaven and finds us. He looks at us from the depths of His own infinite actuality, which is everywhere, and His seeing us gives us a new being and a new mind in which we also discover Him. We only know Him in so far as we are known by Him...."

This made me reflect on Psalm 139 in which the psalmist spends more than half the text explaining how thoroughly God knows him. Then at the end, he adds, "Search me and know me, God." That always struck me as odd because in one sense he's saying, "God you know me." Then in the next breath he says, "Now, come and know me!"

I have always interpreted that as a way of asking God to show me what he sees when he sees me. Merton makes me think that God's piercing gaze lays bare my true face and simultaneously invites me to know His true face. Multiple scriptures come to mind and weave a portrait within me that I cannot find words to describe, but it is powerful. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," Jesus said. Purity leads to vision. Interesting that God's vision of me is what leads me to purity.